[Rebel Stars 01.0] Outlaw

by Edward W. Robertson

  The two vessels neared, slowing. Automated communications passed between them. They were well within comm range, yet the UFO remained silent. Wasn't hard to guess why. It wanted to get close. Close enough to ensure they were alone. And then, to pounce.

  "That's him." Rada's voice was thick with loathing. "That's the bastard who killed Simm."

  The comm line opened. Everyone jumped, held down by their buckles.

  "Greetings, travelers." The man's voice was smooth and soothing. "Thank you for reaching out to us. It is appreciated that you value your relationship with us above money."

  Webber gazed into the device. "All we want is a clean slate. We're asking for enough cash to put this behind us. Nothing more."

  "Will it go far enough? There are four of you. I was led to believe there were two."

  "This is the rest of our crew. They know what would happen to them if they get greedy."

  "I suppose I will have to take that on faith." The man was quiet a moment. "How do I know you haven't made backups? That you won't turn around and sell this to everyone else?"

  "Because the file's sitting on a device we took from the Specter," Webber said, drawing from the LOTR's playbook of plausibility. "We took a close enough look to discover it's set to self-delete if we try to copy it."

  "What else did you see?"

  "Are you asking if we actually have what we claim to possess?" He laughed wryly. "Trust me, I wish we didn't. I wish we'd never gotten involved. But I can't wait to see what you guys do with this. We can finally make it beyond the system, can't we?"

  "Anything can happen," the man said. His ship inched closer, nearing effective engagement range. "The funds have already been transferred. You may check your account, if you like. How do you propose to deliver the schematic?"

  Webber glanced at the screen displaying Rada; she was over on the main bridge. "We'll dump it out the airlock. You can pick it up at your leisure."

  "Agreed." Another pause. The UFO crossed the threshold. "One last question. I was there, too. There was only one possible survivor, and I do not think he made it out. So: who are you?"

  "I am Peregrine Lawson." He gestured the signal to Rada. "You killed my mother. I'm not here for your money—I'm here for your life."

  The link went dead. The UFO whipped forward, disgorging drones. Beside him, MacAdams swore.

  "Countdown to splinter!" Rada said through the ship's comm. "Three! Two! One!"

  The ship clunked and jarred. On the tactical display, the single orange blip representing the Tine became three. Each vessel was as long and thin as a rapier.

  "Come on!" MacAdams clapped. "Let's fork this prick."

  Webber's hands shook so hard he couldn't operate his device. The autopilot took over, curving his portion of the ship—the Tine III—into the attack vector that had produced the best results in the sim. The I and II followed their own courses, dispensing drones, hemming in the UFO. Missiles launched from two dozen different points, including the enemy.

  Webber fought to control his breathing, but his heart was out of the question. The III launched counters that streaked to intercept the UFO's first wave. As the UFO's drones arranged a picket, it swooped straight toward the II. Lara's ship.

  "You think I'm chicken?" Lara said. "We'll see who squawks first."

  The two ships rushed each other, releasing a hellstorm of missiles. The first waves met and detonated in a solid line of fire. The UFO opened up, unfamiliar dots zipping across the tactical screen—kinetic rounds, utterly worthless unless you had the maneuverability to get tight and close.

  Lara jinked out of their way and launched a second spread of rockets. The UFO began to veer, flinging frantic missiles at the II, but he'd gotten too close to dodge or outrun the incoming torpedoes. Silent bursts rippled across the screen, one after the other. Both ships vanished within the conflagration.

  "Son of a bitch!" MacAdams whooped. "We got him!"

  "Regroup," Rada said. "Running scans."

  There was no need. The UFO whooshed from the flowery carnage, trailing flamboyant wisps of flame. The II was nowhere to be seen. The enemy turned hard, readying for the second round.

  21

  Rada's heart dropped through her guts. Her ship was already reacting, tightening its course to the resurgent UFO, but she had nothing to give. The enemy had survived the first encounter and it had taken away one of their ships. They'd never won a single sim with the odds reduced to two on one.

  "Hang on," Webber said through the comm. "Check his vector. See how loose it is? I think Lara winged him!"

  Fast as she could, she had the computer compare his current course to the previous ones. "Either he's playing games with us, or you're on to something. I don't think we're out of this yet."

  As the UFO finished its turn, the front line of drones met and clashed, vaporizing each other. Rockets painted brief conical contrails across the void.

  "He's coming for me," Webber said. "I'm going to flood him."

  "You sure? If he's wounded, I say we go conservative."

  "I don't want to give him any chance to catch his breath. It's time for the knockout."

  "Copy," she said. The UFO was making way for Webber, already beginning to pelt him with rockets. "Got your wing."

  She moved to close, but the UFO still had plenty of zip. She burned hard to try to keep pace. The III let loose a steady barrage of missiles and the enemy was forced to react in kind. The few remaining drones vanished in the wash of fire. As the two ships neared, the III swerved away in autopiloted standard maneuvers, keeping its distance to let the missiles do their job. Counters flocked from both vessels. The UFO cut in hard, attempting to stick itself to the III's six, but Webber seemed intent on pasting it with everything he had. The enemy veered off, dropping counters left and right.

  Rada, meanwhile, had caught up. She sent sporadic rockets at the UFO, forcing it to back further away.

  "I'm almost out," Webber said. "How much firepower does that thing have?"

  "More than we bargained for. I'll take lead. Stay close and choose your shots."

  She'd no sooner said this than the UFO cranked back toward Webber and unleashed another volley. The III scooted away on a straight line, accelerating hard to buy itself as much time as possible for its counters to contend with the rockets. Flares studded the darkness.

  "I'm out," Webber said. "Rada, I'm out!"

  She swore, fired off a burst at the UFO, and swung toward Webber. On tactical, incoming missiles died at the hands of his counters. She wasn't closing fast enough to make a difference. She moved to reengage the enemy.

  Webber cursed steadily, increasing in volume as the rockets neared. His ship bucked crazily, inducing the nearest missiles to collide, taking out those behind them, too. The final survivors burst off his bow, rocking him.

  "You alive over there?" Rada said.

  "Just a flesh wound. But I'm dry. Want me to decoy?"

  "No way." She and the UFO closed on each other, exchanging more missiles. "Next one it sends after you will be your last."

  Despite her warning, he hung close. The enemy came at her hard, forcing her to skate away and buy extra seconds. The UFO drifted in behind her. Too late, she understood the ruse: get her to straighten out, then cling to her tail and chew her apart with his railgun.

  She turned as hard as she could. The Gs climbed, shoving her into her chair. Her vision grayed at the edges. Still the UFO followed. She leveled out, breathing hard. At once, bullets flicked past her. She pulled the Tine into a corkscrew, juking whenever she felt the UFO drawing too tight a bead.

  "I can't shake it," she said. She expected to be terrified, but felt numbness instead. "I could try to flood it. But if I dry out too, we're all dead."

  "I'm coming in," Webber said. "Keep his missiles off me, okay?"

  "You're dry, Webber! What do you think you're doing?"

  "Trying. On my mark, straighten out, okay?"

  "And give him a clear shot?"

  "E
xactly."

  "This is insane." The Tine shuddered; the latest volley had clipped her wing. At least it was only decorative. She deployed counters, sending them toward the nearing III. "Tell me when."

  As Webber approached, the UFO flung a handful of rockets at him, but stayed locked to Rada's tail. Through the comm, Webber was breathing hard. Accelerating faster than his body could sustain. He came up parallel to them, advancing halfway between her and the FinnTech assassin.

  "Now!" he yelled.

  She leveled out. He veered hard toward the line between her and the enemy. As soon as he crossed it, the III began to wiggle and shuck.

  "What the hell?" Rada said.

  "Just shaking my ass at him."

  The UFO fired on Webber instead. Bits and pieces of the chewed-up III fell away. And then she understood. So, too, did the enemy. He veered hard.

  White light flashed from his front as Webber's homemade flak tore through the face of his ship. Someone screamed; she thought it must be the assassin, but it was MacAdams, delirious with battle-joy. Rada peeled away, hammer-heading around to nail the UFO with everything she had left.

  There was no need. He was drifting, silent, one more piece of flotsam coasting forever on the universe's endless sea.

  Rada laughed into the comm. "I don't believe for a single second you thought that would work."

  "I was just trying to get him off you," Webber said. "Although this outcome did cross my mind."

  "He's coasting. I'm launching the coup de grace."

  "Hang on! You can't waste him. Not like this."

  "Suddenly you're merciful?" She cued up the launch. "Bad news: I'm not."

  "I want him dead as much as you," Webber said. "But I want what's on his ship, too. I'm going to come up on him. MacAdams and I will board. Us marines need a taste of the action."

  Rada stared at the screens, suddenly hungry to make this work. "He looks intact. What if he's playing dead?"

  "Park a missile on his ass. If he twitches, blow him to hell."

  "And if you're onboard then?"

  "Then at least I'll die with him."

  "MacAdams?"

  "Maybe it's the adrenaline talking," MacAdams replied. "But I want in on this, too."

  "I'll park it off his engine." She programmed orders to the missile. "If it blows, hopefully that's all it'll take out. But once you light something up, there's no telling how big it's going to burn."

  She launched the rocket. It slowed, creeping up to the UFO's rear. As it snugged into place, Webber brought the III around to the silent vessel's fore. On high zoom, Rada watched as two suited figures exited their storm-tossed ship, swam through the void, and entered the punctured hull of the assassin's ship.

  Webber screamed.

  ~

  Webber landed on the hull with a thud. He grabbed for a strut, expecting to bounce off, but his magnets stuck with no rebound at all. MacAdams made a similarly fluid landing beside him.

  "That ain't normal," the other man said.

  "The device is intact," Webber said. "Time to do what pirates do best."

  "Catch the pox?"

  Much of the hull was far too hot for his suit to handle. Webber navigated to a gash that was only scalding rather than volcanic and eased himself around the rended metal edges. A weak artificial gravity field sprung up, threatening to scrape him over the jagged metal if he slipped. He took his time getting inside, trying not to think about the missile Rada had parked off the ship's tail.

  The gash led to a cargo bay. There was no atmosphere, no pressure. The bay held a few containers secured tight to the floors and wall. An old fashioned notepad lay in the middle of the floor. You just didn't see things strewn unsecured around a starship and the presence of the object spooked him worse than a body would have. He bent to pick it up. Block capitals filled the page. The writing was gibberish, word salad. He scanned a few pages and secured it in a zippered pocket.

  MacAdams moved swiftly between the clamped-down boxes, gesturing that it was clear. He led the way upstairs, pistol in hand. Compared to the lower level, the upper was a scrap heap. Flakes, splinters, and chunks of metal and polymers carpeted the floor. Huge wounds slashed the bulkheads. A scuzzy haze of smoke fuzzed the corridors.

  In the command room, the front wall had been shredded. Very expensive rubble strewed the ground, shifting silently under Webber's steps. A spindly man was seated in the captain's chair. Flak pierced his body. Bright red icicles had dripped from the wounds, but his suit had already resealed itself.

  MacAdams made a spitting noise. "Only human."

  "Sure he's not a vampire?" Webber leaned in for a closer look. "Maybe one of those stakes hit his heart."

  Behind his mask, the man's eyes popped open. Webber screamed and scrabbled back, lifting his pistol.

  "Webber!" Rada said over the comm. "You okay?"

  Webber steadied his aim. "He's alive."

  The man lifted a hand, shards of plastic falling from his suit's sleeve. "Get out. You don't get to be here."

  "I'd like to watch you suffer," Webber said. "But I'll like this even more."

  He pulled the trigger. The gun's bang was a whisper—there was just a bit of smoke to carry the sound—but to his surprise, he hardly felt its buck, either. A distant part of him wondered how the bullets had even fired at all, but this ran a distant second to watching the man's face go slack.

  "He's gone, Rada." He holstered his weapon. "It's over.

  ~

  Yon felt the bullet enter him—an indescribable kick, followed by numbness—but he didn't mind the discomfort half so much as the disgusting feel of having the two men watching him die. It felt like worms slipping between his skin and the fat beneath. He tried to scream at them to go away, but something had stolen his breath.

  Their faces loomed above him like two dim moons. The moment became forever. The light in the command room faded, but as it waned, the two moons waxed. They were no longer the faces of humans—they were the eyes of a Swimmer.

  The alien descended on him. He tried again to scream, but the creature was deaf. Its tentacles enfolded him in a moist and sickening embrace.

  ~

  "There it is." Over the comm, Webber's voice was hushed, reverent. "Are you seeing this?"

  She stared up at the screen, conscious that her mouth was actually hanging open. "Sorry, I'm in awe over here. This is like rubbing a lamp and watching the genie come out."

  "Except we didn't rub the lamp. We shot it. And now we're going to kidnap the genie."

  On the screen, a silver cylinder projected from the floor of the UFO's guts. Minute stars orbited it in complex patterns, distorting the shadows of the room. She suspected the tiny lights were decorative rather than integral to the design, and she feared it had been built by alien claws rather than human hands, but she didn't care. It was beautiful.

  "Enough gawking," Rada said. "Load it up and let's get out of here before FinnTech's backup arrives."

  While Webber and MacAdams uninstalled it from the UFO, Rada began composing messages. Most were to Toman and the Hive, but she had one for Simm's parents, too. The two men returned in the box bearing the object. They came to the bridge all grins.

  "We have got to get that thing plugged into the Tine," Webber said. "We'll be the meanest ship in the system."

  "Toman will want it," Rada said. "But I bet I can talk him into giving us the first copy."

  "He'd better." MacAdams found a seat and settled in with a sigh. "Won't be long before this is the new normal."

  She nodded, lost in the idea of the coming future. An era defined not by the weakness of flesh and metal, nor of the might of whatever unseen forces lurked beyond the fringes of humanity, but by the wills of those willing to push into the unknown.

  "So what's next?" Webber said.

  She grinned at the stars. "Who knows?"

  "Surely Toman has a plan. Isn't he some whiz kid supergenius?"

  "Oh, what's next for the Hive?" She turned and gave h
im an impish smile. "Simple. We tell the world."

  22

  The world, as usual, didn't give a big fat shit.

  Oh, there was plenty of hooting and hollering. Some claimed the Motion Arrestors, as they began to be known—much to the consternation of the LOTR, who claimed that wasn't what the devices did at all—were a transparent Swimmer plot to finally destroy humanity once and for all. FinnTech argued there was nothing in the MAs that would suggest such a thing. When various research groups insisted FinnTech release the schemas for independent verification, FinnTech balked, claiming that, given the horrendously lax state of patent protection, a delay was necessary to ensure their proprietary rights were secured.

  This opened the door to the sub-argument that they didn't deserve patent rights in the first place. FinnTech argued that it shouldn't matter how they'd acquired the technology, only that they had; others insisted that the circumstances of their acquisition were well beyond the scope of existing laws and thus the laws could not apply.

  Most of these opinions were forwarded by scholars, pundits, judges, low-level representatives, and so on. The players, the people who mattered, they weren't even paying attention. Not when the new technology meant better, fleeter ships. Not when fleeter ships meant more profit. FinnTech was already scrambling to fill orders. Toman's people had nearly reverse-engineered the MA the Tine had brought back and were leaning toward selling their own line of the product.

  Like Rada had said, the genie was out of the bottle. Anyone trying to stuff it back in would wind up watching helplessly as they fell behind the culture's newest leap.

  Webber was about as far as he could get from the front lines of this politico-economical warfare and received most of his news from Rada. He intended to rejoin her soon enough, but for the moment, he had other business.

  It was a long ride from the port. After cruising through an array of neighborhoods, the cab found St. Martin's Street, a quiet neighborhood of single homes. The vehicle whirred to a stop outside a pale blue house. Webber hated himself for caring that its lawn was well-tended, but if the lawn was being seen to, then presumably Dinah was too. He couldn't help smiling: the house was modest, but it was hers.